Advising and acting for numerous schools and childcare facilities in response to claims made by students and invitees for personal injuries occurring on school premises and childcare premises.

Advising and acting for numerous schools in response to claims made by students for personal injuries occurring during school activities and excursions offsite.

Advising and acting for a Higher Education provider in defence a claim for personal injury including psychiatric injury. The claim involved complex considerations of overlapping and differentiated duties as towards employees and students.

Advising and acting for schools in response to claims made by students arising from abuse (psychological, physical and/or sexual) by staff members or other students.

Claims made by students arising from bullying, physical assaults and/or sexual assaults require particular sensitivity and understanding of potential discrimination implications where it is alleged the injury was caused by a student with disability.

Acting and advising Government and private schools in response to discrimination complaints made by students based on disability, race and/or gender.

In relation to complaints of discrimination based on disability, we often reach a successful outcome by negotiating reasonable adjustments to the satisfaction of both parties so that the student has continued access to education.

Acting for an Australian university in defence of a claim of discrimination, alleging discriminatory practices against a former student and arising from a decision to exclude the claimant from further study. The claim was successfully defended, and judgment entered in favour of the university.

Responding to claims made against schools for property damage.

Pursuing claims on behalf of schools against third parties for damage incurred to the property.

Advising and acting for schools in SafeWork investigations following major incidents, including assisting in communicating with SafeWork, attending for interviews and preparing responses to SafeWork requests for information.

Advising and acting for schools in the defence of unfair dismissal claims in the Fair Work Commission. Most matters settled on favourable terms with proceedings withdrawn.

Advising and acting for an early childhood education and care, and out of school hours care, provider in the defence of disciplinary proceedings commenced by the regulator following a notifiable incident, including assisting in the preparation of responses and corresponding with the regulator to reach agreement on fines, agreed facts and consent orders to be entered.

WK provided coverage advice to insurers in relation to a breach of copyright claim that arose from an alleged misuse of education quality survey software by a higher education provider. The claim was ultimately resolved without the need for litigation by defence counsel within the deductible.

WK were engaged to provide legal advice to a Melbourne private school in relation to a ransomware attack suffered in 2023. We worked closely with the forensic experts engaged to advise the school on its legal obligations in relation to the incident. The school suffered a significant downtime following the incident whilst the systems were restored. An important aspect of our work was to assist drafting communications to the school board, staff, parents and students regarding the incident, with a key focus on risk and reputation management. Fortunately, there was no evidence of unauthorised access to files containing personal information of students or staff. As such, we ultimately determined the incident did not constitute an eligible data breach under the Privacy Act, so formal regulatory notification was not required.

WK were engaged to provide legal advice to a private school in Tasmania, in relation to cyber security incident in 2021. The incident related to unauthorised access by a student to a staff account on the student portal, where sensitive information relating to other students was held. Following a forensic investigation, it was discovered the student had viewed pastoral care records of over 50 students which included health information and sensitive learning information regarding academic and behavioural issues. We undertook a PII review of the impacted records to identity impacted individuals, following which we provided privacy advice to the Insured, advising the incident satisfied the definition of an eligible data breach under the Privacy Act. We subsequently assisted the Insured notify the OAIC and impacted students. An important aspect of our work also included providing advice on communications throughout the incident investigation.

WK provided coverage advice to insurers in relation to a data breach of a tertiary education provider involving significant amounts of sensitive personal information. The circumstances of the breach were highly confidential and WK assisted in establishing information sharing protocols to suit the insured’s comfort levels. The policy claim was ultimately settled commercially.

WK provided incident response services to an Australian university in relation to an email incident resulting from human error, which involved email recipients being inadvertently cc’d instead of bcc’d. The email was sent to vulnerable individuals who were receiving services from a university research centre. In our role as incident response manager, we provided advice and guidance to the Insured on next steps, including a consideration of the mandatory data breach scheme under the NSW State Privacy Legislation which recently became mandatory in November 2023, which now aligns closely with the Federal notification scheme.